And so the MRAs have found yet another woman to hate.
Earlier this month, as many of you no doubt know, a Men’s Rights group sponsored a lecture at the University of Toronto. The event drew protesters, and the protesters drew MRAs with video cameras. One of the MRAs filmed a confrontation between a red-haired feminist activist and a number of MRAs who continually interrupted her as she tried to read a brief statement.
Her crime? She wasn’t exactly polite in responding to the interrupters. And so, after video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube, and linked to on the Men’s Rights subreddit and elsewhere, she became a virtual punching bag for the angry misogynists of the internet.
A Voice for Men, naturally, led the charge, running an article by Canadian MRA Dan Perrins labeling her “Little red frothing fornication mouth” and commenting on her breasts. The Amazing Atheist weighed in with a video I couldn’t bring myself to even watch.
Since being targeted by angry YouTube misogynists and MRAs, the red-haired activist has received death threats, rape threats and literally hundreds of other hateful and harassing messages. She’s also been “doxxed” — that is, she’s had her personal information plastered all over the internet, including on A Voice for Men’s forum. Ten days after being uploaded to YouTube, the video of her faceoff against the MRAs has garnered more than 300,000 views, and YouTubers are still leaving threats and insults and crude sexual comments.
This, apparently, is what “Men’s Human Rights Activism” consists of: the doxxing and harassment of individual women.
Several days ago, she contacted me to tell me about the harassment she’s endured. Here’s some of what she wrote:
I’m the red-head. I’m sure by now, you’re one of the 260,000 people who have seen the video of me … .
Because I had the audacity to tell a dude to stfu, an MRA no less, I have since been the target of not only just online misogyny (as if that’s a surprise) but cyber stalking, rape and death threats. They somehow found my facebook, they found my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …
I also got an anonymous message on tumblr that specifically said “[name deleted] would be disappointed”. [Name deleted] is my dog that died 1.5 years ago, I don’t talk about him on tumblr, nor fb, so they would have had to reaaaaalllly dig to find this info. …
In about 12-24hours, I got about400-500 new messages on my blog, most of them hate, which included rape and death threats, also people wishing death upon me or the typical troll “kill yourself” message. They made a meme of me.
I dunno how many haters I have, and I don’t know where they are. I can’t be sure at any given second, if I’m ever outside my house … if anyone is going to recognize me and try to hurt me.
With her permission, I am reposting screenshots she sent me documenting some of the harassment she’s endured. Even though her personal information has already been widely disseminated online, I don’t want to contribute to that, so I’ve whited out any information that might reveal her identity.
TRIGGER WARNING for what follows, for threatening language and crude sexual remarks.
Here’s a death threat she received from someone claiming to represent the “Islamic Brotherhood.”
Here are some sample comments from her Tumblr inbox. I’ve whited out comments and parts of comments that consist of her contact info, which being sent to her in an attempt to intimidate and frighten her by letting her know they “know where she lives.”
Here’s another threatening comment sent to her via Tumblr:
Here are some comments sent to her via her YouTube account. You’ll notice that the second comment comes from AVFM’s Dan Perrins, who is clearly relishing the attacks on her.
And another glimpse into her YouTube inbox:
Here’s a screenshot from a Men’s Rights forum revealing her personal information.
Meanwhile, over on YouTube, the hateful comments continue to pile up. Here are some of the nastiest ones I’ve collected. I am deliberately posting a lot of them in an attempt to convey something of the relentless nature of the attacks on teh red-haired activist — though I should note I’ve only gone through a small portion of the total comments there and this doesn’t even reflect all of the awful ones I found. These are not in any particular order. I threw in a few non-threatening ones that struck me as a tad ironic or otherwise revealing.
Again, this is only a small fraction of the abuse she’s gotten on YouTube.
This is what happens when MRAs and other misogynists target a woman online. The only thing that’s surprising here is the sheer amount of the hateful comments.
I’ve seen no serious attempts from any MRAs to rein in this sort of hatred. A Voice for Men has tried to distance itself in a superficial way from some of the harassment it has played a central role in unleashing, with an official announcement asking readers to refrain from posting the personal information of the red-haired activist in the comments. Meanwhile, in the AVFM forum, comments linking to her defunct dating profiles remain up.
This is what MRA “activism” looks like.
Coming tomorrow: A more detailed look at AVFM’s role in the harassment.
And I hadn’t even noticed “is acting as priviledged b-word”. I’m very gullible, when people tell they are something, my first instinct is almost to believe them.
“You’re a talking chair? That’s great! Uh, wait a minute…”
I can believe a feminist would believe in the absurd concept of misandry, but none would called a fellow feminist being doxxed a “privileged bitch”. My bad.
They’re making our point for us, yet again. They just don’t seem to see that they’re doing pretty much exactly what anyone would expect from them, a kind of hysterical malevolence.
And they claim not to be a hate group *eyeroll*.
Is there anything we can do to help her? She doesn’t deserve this sort of overwrought vilification. Heaven forbid she should actually tell a man to STFU!
I’m gullible with lots of the trolls too, in that I sort of assume good faith sometimes. Like that one racist guy who kept calling black men “boys” I actually assumed they were talking about kids until someone who read the article told me they were 22-24. So…
@Bagryanova Yeah, you’re a feminist using phrases like “white knight” and “misandry” … fuck off back to Troll Mountain.
David, please send Redhead my support and if she would like to get in touch, I’m happy for her to have my email address.
Thank you, David, for bringing all this into the light. The private militia that calls itself avfm depends on the dark for its work to be fully successful. Here, they doxxed the person, wrote inflammatory and contemptuous things about her, and played a new game on the mensrights sub. Propaganda theory must have a word for this; write something hateful, then loudly and sanctimoniously ask that readers, who as usual are about to unleash a torrent of intimidation, NOT DO SO. This piques the interest of many who would not otherwise have read the avfm link in the sub, who are then inflamed and go after the victim. avfm gets to direct its intimidation squad to the victim and pretend at the same time that it did not do so. That avfm is using this technique of false disavowal is a credit to you, David. I think they are concerned about their image as misogynous thugs and have at least reached a point where they don’t just call openly for intimidation any more. No one but you is bringing all this out; the women victims are generally hand-picked for their isolation and vulnerability and are so crushed by the threats they are completely silenced from responding. avfm’s rage tactics will inevitably lead some deranged person to kill or physically injure one of their victims at some point; the step from doing it in detailed fantasy to doing it in reality is a small one.
Bagryanova:
Go step on a Lego.
If anyone wants to send her messages of support, email them to me and I’ll send them along to her.
Bagryanova, so anyone who dares speak up against anything deserves death threats?
Seems legit. /sarcasm.
David, do you still have any contacts at Salon? I think the best way to combat this kind of thing is to expose it to mainstream media attention.
Yeah, Bagryanova, I really believe you’re a feminist and you’re just worried about The Cause. That’s why you used the term “white knight”, and why you think her behavior is a bigger feminist issue than a woman being silenced with threats of rape and violence.
To you, and to all the other assholes who are gonna come in here and whine about us “agreeing with her behavior” or “but she was so rude” or whatever, I’m only gonna say this once: THE ISSUE HERE IS NOT WHAT SHE SAID OR DID. THE ISSUE IS THE REACTION TO WHAT SHE SAID AND DID. She is being terrorized, in a specifically sexist way, and I don’t want to hear any JAQing off about what she did to “deserve” it.
Yeah, that first comment? Part of me wishes that I could believe David faked it, simply because the notion that Bags is on the level is depressing. And yet it’s true. Blech.
First round of brain-bleach–I give folks the Purple Dragon Sea-Slug, as a reminder that the universe contains infinite forms of beauty and majesty:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxdtnmwSSc1r6bovho1_500.jpg
http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sea-slug1.jpg?w=450&h=301
So, MRAs, what have you done to abolish the oppression of males everywhere. Bullied a woman you say? Did it work?
Oh, I missed “misandry”, “b-word”, and calling a woman privileged wrt sexism. Might be easier to pretend to be a feminist if you weren’t so bloody ignorant, Bagryanova.
Bagryanova: If you’re a feminist, I’m the Tooth Fairy. Shut up.
PaulE is soooooo disingenuous with his pleas for no doxxing and non-violence. Remember, this shit gives him a boner.
Reblogged this on Dead Wild Roses and commented:
Evidence of the ugly side (is there a good side?) of the MRA movement. This is prima fucking facia proof of the ugly current of misogyny that runs deep in our society. Go to Manboobz and see the despicable MRA movement terrorize someone for expressing their views on their particular shit movement.
Trying to find brain bleach and not working. Plus a friend of mine lost his second child in a still birth so not that great of a day. 🙁
@Abnoy
Yeah, those are some real “freedom-fighters”, centering all their attacks on a single target who’s not remotely prominent or high-ranking. Taking down the feminist stranglehold on government and the media, one college student at a time! Wait…
Also, what the fuck does gender equality have to do with anything? You think we’d be OK with this kind of terror campaign if it was happening to a man?
And if feminists were threatening men with rape for daring to tell a woman stfu, you might have a… well, no, you still wouldn’t have point.
Brave MRAs, fighting for the freedom to rape and abuse people without punishment from the law.
http://cheezburger.com/7297485568
This made me smile.
The thing that gets me is that these people have no clue how privileged they are to not have to worry that anyone will find out about their nasty statements. None. They know they can spew all they want and none of them would be fired or shamed for what they have said. No girlfriends or wives or mothers will cut them out their lives. Nope. They get clean away with it without realising that is a privilege that they have.
Abnoy: Where’s this equality that you’re seeing? Seriously, shit-spewer, define it.
And either way, doing what these people are doing is illegal. I do not know of one place on earth where it is perfectly legal to threaten a person with death. Not one.
So equality equals equal violence? The “if feminists want to be equal then I can punch them” argument is totally missing the point of equality. It’s sad that some men treat each other that bad to begin with.
@Princessbonbon
the horse made me smile, too. *is thankful for brain bleach*
Really peaceful and reasonable men are in the MRM… NOT
yeah, this is criminal inciting to violence maybe as avfm has to be fully aware from past experience what will occur after its incitements. It’s time for the FBI to read avfm’s secret backroom thread to be sure none of the plotting there rises to the level of criminality.